Star Trek | Critical Essay by Karin Blair

Critical Essay by Karin Blair

The problem of the alien is essential to every civilization, which inescapably defines itself in terms of what it is not. In American history the alien par excellence was the Indian. As Tyrrel points out in "Star Trek as Myth" there were two categories of Indians: "The noble warrior forever outside the white man's world" and the "sly, perfidious, fallen" Indian bound to the white man's world by that very fall. Translated into the world of Star Trek we have the Romulans who are "aggressive militaristic aliens … nonetheless … hard to hate" and the sly deceitful Klingons. From this initial point of similarity, however, Star Trek scripts do not continue with the usual anticipated attempts to destroy the alien…. Hatred and attempts at mutual destruction will lead only to an eternal hell. Familiar moral categories are used as...